Briggs: Fearless Toledo women's basketball team out to make history in a place full of it

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — They are chasing history in a place full of it.

As Tricia Cullop and her University of Toledo women’s basketball program look to climb to new heights Monday night, where would they rather be than right here on Rocky Top?

Save for Savage Arena, nowhere.

Walk into Thompson-Boling Arena — where the 12th-seeded Rockets will meet host Tennessee in the second round of the NCAA tournament — and you feel like you’re in the home of the sport, its towering past on display in the rafters.

There are 18 outsized orange banners honoring the Lady Vols, one a tribute to legendary coach Pat Summitt, the rest to all that she built in her 39 years here.

Eight are for the national championships Tennessee won from 1987 to 2008. Another half dozen are for the Hall of Famers who helped win them.

Chamique Holdsclaw. Tamika Catchings. Candace Parker. The list goes on.

The hulking arena on the Tennessee River has seen enough greatness to fill a museum, which might be why the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame is down the street.

Toledo is embracing all of it.

Earlier in the week, Cullop showed her team a documentary on Summitt, and, since arriving in Knoxville, the Rockets have visited the Hall and posed with the statue of Summitt outside the arena.

“I’ll be honest,” Cullop said, “out of all the sites we could have gone to, this is a really cool place to be sent because of that history.”

Now, Toledo has a chance to make some of it own, in a matchup with stakes and a setting straight out of its hoops imagination.

What could be better than this?

Toledo at Tennessee.

UT at UT.

Rockets at Rocky Top.

All that’s on the line is Toledo’s first Sweet 16 berth in program history.

“This is an experience you dream of as a kid,” forward Nan Garcia said.

“Something that I can't even put into words,” guard Khera Goss added.

Fortunately, Cullop was able to help us out.

For her, the game here will be especially poignant.

She revered Summitt as a young basketball player, then, better yet, got to know her.

Cullop thought back to the first time she got to see the master at work, when, as a young assistant at Xavier in the 1990s, she drove down to Knoxville one summer to watch Summitt run her team through individual workouts.

“She sat beside me afterward,” Cullop said, “and she couldn’t have been more giving of her time,”

She and Summitt eventually became friends, and Cullop enjoyed little more than talking shop with the legend on the recruiting trail.

I asked her for her favorite Summitt story.

“I remember sitting beside her in the stands one time recruiting, and you’re sitting close enough and we all have rental car keys sitting on the bleachers,” she said. “As we got ready to leave, I walked out to the parking lot and I hit the beeper on my car. I didn’t know which one it was. When I hit it, a Beamer lit up and I’m like, ‘These are not my car keys!’ I ran back in and told Pat, ‘I think I’ve got your keys.’ ... We had a good laugh about that.”

Cullop added: “I will just say this: What an amazing person. Very giving. One thing that I took from her is just to be very willing to help others, because that meant a lot to me, and I know it means a lot to high school coaches that stop by our gyms. Be gracious and kind and helpful when you can be.

“I can’t imagine how many people [Summitt] helped through the years beyond me. She did it because she cared. She didn’t have to open her doors to us. But she did it out of kindness and willingness to keep moving things forward in our game.”

Fast forward to the present, and, no, these are not your older sister’s Lady Vols.

In their glory days under Summitt — who died at 64 in 2016 after a battle with Alzheimer’s — they were a cultural hoops phenomenon, averaging more than 15,000 fans per game many seasons.

Now, they are another very good program.

A decade after Summitt stepped down, Tennessee (24-11) is in its 41st straight NCAA tournament but in pursuit of its first Final Four since 2008.

But everything is relative.

Just as Notre Dame football will always be Notre Dame football, the Lady Vols are still the Lady Vols.

I mean, how many schools average only 8,400 fans per game and have a 21-affiliate women’s basketball radio network? And, for that matter, how many teams more look the part?

We’ll leave the X’s and O’s breakdown to our Toledo beat writer, Kyle Rowland, but two things stand out about the challenge facing the Rockets: The size of the crowd — Tennessee is 58-1 all-time in tourney games played at its rocking home arena — and the size of the Lady Vols.

The average Toledo starter is 5-10. Even factoring in 5-8 point guard Jordan Walker, the average Tennessee starter is 6-1.

The Lady Vols — led by senior stars Rickea Jackson (19.5 points) and Jordan Horston (15.7 points) — are long, athletic, and disruptive.

No question, Toledo is in for a hell of a test.

But, hey, what else is new?

If someone wants to tell these Rockets they’re overmatched, it won’t be me.

“Our kids are looking forward to the challenge,” Cullop said. “Do we think it'll be easy? Absolutely not. We're going to have to work our tails off. It's going to have to be our whole team playing team defense. If we went out and played one-on-one, they would win every time. But the good thing is we get to play five-on-five.”

And a team for history plans to take its biggest swing.

“We're going to give it our best shot,” Cullop said, “and see what happens.”